This was a feature that as far as Kerne knew was unique to the Dark Hunters Chapter. There were brethren in the Haradai with a century of experience who preferred the sniper rifle and the ghost-like warfare of the Scout Company to the bolter and power armour of Mortai, or Haroun, or Novus. It had become part of the Chapter’s ethos to field a strong force of Scout Marines in any conflict, and it was not unknown for some in the line companies to go back to the Haradai for several months.
Fornix had spent two years back with the Scouts during the Gulbec war, only a few years ago. He was fast friends with Fell Ambros, captain of the Haradai, and the two worked well together. But even in the Dark Hunters, his action had been seen as eccentric in the extreme, and Jord Malchai had opposed it.
‘How did you link up with Orsus?’ Kerne asked his first sergeant.
‘After the landing I found myself lying flat on my back with one of the drop pod hatches on top of me – thank the Emperor for this.’ Fornix raised and opened the power fist on the end of one arm.
‘Brother Kass was not five metres from me, and he was able to detect the psychic footprint of our brethren through this soup of dust, which was just as well, because all my vox and infra systems were scrambled. I was as blind as a Phobian bat in a snowstorm.’
Kass and Malchai were behind them, walking side by side. Kerne had his own questions about Brother Kass, questions raised during the boarding action, but this was no place to voice them.
Brother-Sergeant Laufey of the Haradai came on the vox.
‘Command, this is Hunter Three.’
‘Command. Send, over,’ Kerne said.
‘Armaments District wall eighty metres to my front, manned by what looks like Imperial infantry. Shall I attempt comms with them, captain?’
‘Affirmative. Let them know which way we are coming in, brother, and tell them to shift fire with that damned artillery. It’s starting to impact close to our rear. I am sending you the coordinates.’
He blinked on the numberpad he had called up inside his helm, his eyes flicking from it, to the map overlay, and then the tactical readout.
All the while, he was monitoring the newly discovered Imperial net that Dietrich had turned up on, listening in on the activity of the Thunderhawk squadrons overhead, and in the world outside his helm he was scanning his lines of warriors as they advanced through the ruins and assessing their progress and formations.
No human mind could have assimilated so much information, digested it and reacted to it with the same pitiless efficiency that a captain of the Adeptus Astartes brought to the process. For Kerne, it was not even much of a conscious effort, no more than walking or breathing. It was what he had been created to do.
He called up Dietrich again. But it was a strange voice on the vox which answered him this time.
‘This is Commissar Ismail Von Arnim of the 387th Armoured. I am de facto second in command of Imperial Guard forces on this planet.’
‘Where is Dietrich?’
‘My lord, he is in the gun-caverns, coordinating our fireplan.’
‘Very well. Shift your fire south, commissar, and notify your forces in the Armaments District that a half-company of Adeptus Astartes is about to enter their lines. We will proceed through them, and clear the way to the citadel. Once that is done, our Thunderhawks will begin direct assault on any enemy positions you flag up for us.
‘I want a perimeter cleared from my position all the way to the citadel. By darkness I intend to hold that perimeter in strength, in readiness for further operations during the night. Do you understand?’
‘Perfectly, my lord. And may I say what an honour–’
‘Kerne out.’ Jonah cut the vox. There was no time for self-congratulation, and he did not relish, the way some Adeptus Astartes did, the awe in which normal humans held his kind.
‘Command, this is Hawk One.’
‘Send, over.’
It was Simarron. ‘Attack on enemy airstrip going in now, captain. Six gunships.’
‘Acknowledged. Burn them, brother. Burn them into the ground.’
Kerne felt a great impatience well up in him. That, along with his temper, he had fought to rein in for decades.
Whatever had happened here, the worst of it was over – the storm had passed. The forces of the Great Enemy might have been enough to overwhelm the Imperial Guard and the pitiful human militia of this world, but against the Dark Hunters they had no hope of victory. His brothers were grinding them under their feet.
He was disappointed. He had been hoping for more.
Both the Imperial Guard and the Punisher warbands were lacking in infared equipment for their infantry, and had been for some time. In the last several weeks nightfall had brought about a lull in combat operations, and apart from the incessant skirmishing of patrols, and the odd night assault, the dark hours had been the quietest of the war.
All this now changed.
The Dark Hunters did not pause, or regroup, or stop to consolidate. As the day died, and the Kargad System’s dull star went down in the banks of dun-coloured cloud, so the tempo of combat operations actually picked up.
Mortai split up into squads, and began fanning out across the city, slaughtering any Punisher forces they came across. The Thunderhawks landed the rest of the company in diverse locations across Askai and these squads began working their way through the broken urban wasteland metre by metre, supported by the gunships.
When heavier resistance was met, the Hawks dropped ten-bomb sticks of rosaries upon it, and then chewed up the stunned enemy with chain-guns.
And in their wake, the line-squads advanced inexorably, groups of armoured giants who never wearied, who never broke or hesitated or retreated. The Dark Hunters had a long memory of hatred to work off against these, their bitterest foes.
The hordes of Punisher cultists, and the scattered squads of Chaos Space Marines which had been left behind to stiffen their ranks could not withstand that cold, clinical precision, that economy of death. All across the fifty-kilometre length of Ras Hanem’s ruined capital, all through the night and into the bloody dawn of the next day, the Dark Hunters did their work, and nothing could withstand them.
And in the shadows, when the Chaos bands had broken and run, they found no shelter in bunkers or trenches, for the Scout Marines of Haradai harassed them without mercy, dropping Chaos champions with headshots from the long sniper rifles of their calling, picking off all those who tried to rally their fellows, bringing down the veterans who carried banners and heavy weapons, and banishing all notions of rest or safety from the bewildered enemy.
Kerne lost nine battle-brothers in the first thirty-six hours of the city-wide assault, but the Punishers died in their unmourned thousands.
They finally broke, and ran for the bridges, the gates. They hid in holes and half-ruined cellars. But they were burned and blasted out of every hiding place.
It went on all of that day, and continued into a second night of ceaseless slaughter without rest or pause.
The Thunderhawks touched down to resupply the scattered squads of Space Marines, and then took off again in moments to circle again, like vultures of Old Earth circling a dying prey.
A wind came up out of the desert to the east, clearing the air and revealing a vast sky brimful of stars, intensely bright and clear to those in the darkened city below.
The Ogadai was one of those stars, the brightest, holding over Askai in geostationary orbit. Nothing challenged the huge Dark Hunters cruiser and its surviving escorts. The skies belonged to the Imperium now.
Finally, the last coherent elements of the Punishers made a grand, concerted effort to charge the citadel, out of sheer desperation if no tactical sense.